


Hard Feelings

by fiacresgirl



Series: Summer of Sorrow [6]
Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Angst, Coping, F/M, Grief, Hurt/Comfort, PTSD, Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-01
Updated: 2016-07-01
Packaged: 2018-07-19 11:39:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,330
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7359745
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fiacresgirl/pseuds/fiacresgirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Felicity has a nightmare about Havenrock, and in its aftermath she and Oliver talk about Damien Darhk.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hard Feelings

**Author's Note:**

  * For [imusuallyobsessed](https://archiveofourown.org/users/imusuallyobsessed/gifts).



> This vignette is for imusuallyobsessed. Thanks for [the fic rec](https://imusuallyobsessed.tumblr.com/post/146613024815/fic-recs-6)! 
> 
> It could also be included in [Nightmares](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4349483/chapters/9865388), but I decided to keep it within this Summer of Sorrow series for continuity.

Felicity screams as she sits up in bed, and the sound scrapes her throat as it exits and then echoes off the walls of the room. She is out of bed in an instant, scrambling, looking, desperate to find her laptop. The colors and numbers fade from her vision and disappear into the murky gray of her mind, but she doesn’t stop rifling through the things on the desk. She has to find it.

“Where _is_ it?” She _must_ find it. Where in the hell is it?

“Felicity,” a voice says, and she feels pressure on her arm, but she keeps searching. It’s fading, though, the reason behind the search. Not the fear - that’s still there, but why she’s doing this…

What is she doing? Where is she?

She closes her eyes tightly, and counts backwards: 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. When she opens her eyes, Oliver is there, his hands on both of her arms now. “What is it?” he asks.

She gulps for air. “N-nothing!” she says because the truth is too ridiculous. Darhk’s nuclear strike is over, averted. It was over weeks - no, months - ago. Her laptop, which is what she was frantic to find, can’t help her save the people of Havenrock, but she wakes up night after night clawing for it anyway.

She breathes in through her nose. The sour-sweet smell of diapers and baby wipes isn’t in the air, instead it’s the dust and newly cut lumber of the loft’s repair work. She’s not at Lyla’s. “Sara,” she says.

“Sara’s with Lyla,” Oliver says. He runs his hands up and down her arms gently. “Breathe again, in through your nose.”

She follows his instructions, and this time she feels the stretch of raw skin she screamed open at the back of her throat. “I woke you,” she says.

“Well, yes,” Oliver says with a smile. “Your banshee impression is solid.”

She clamps her incisors down on her lower lip. “I’m sorry.” Her voice sounds hoarse.

Oliver slides an arm around her shoulder. “Don’t be,” he says. “How many times have I woken you up?”

He has a point, but it doesn’t make her feel any more like she’s in control of herself. “I probably woke the neighbors up too.”

He shakes his head. “The walls are soundproofed. That’s what Malcolm paid the big money for. Besides, it’s doubtful that you made more noise than I did bashing my way through the glass to stop Darhk. If the neighbors didn’t complain then, they won’t now.”

She’s a little unclear on one thing. “What am I doing here?”

“You fell asleep,” he says.

“But I don’t do that here,” she says. “Not since…”

“You did tonight,” Oliver says. “You looked so tired, I didn’t want to wake you up. I texted Lyla, though, to let her know.”

“I should go,” Felicity says, sighing. “Sara will need me in the morning.”

“I told her you’re staying here tonight. She’s dropping Sara off tomorrow.”

“You thought I’d stay here?”

“I thought if you were sleeping, you needed the rest. You’ve been looking really exhausted.”

“Thanks,” she says with a grimace.

“How much sleep have you been getting?” Oliver asks.

She shakes her head. “Not enough. I wake up like this, and I sometimes throw up in the night now.”

“In the middle of the night?”

“I guess it’s just _called_ morning sickness,” she says.

Empathy soaks the soft blue of his eyes. “What can I do to help you sleep?” he asks.

Should she go? Or will she just wake everyone up over at Lyla’s too? She looks at Oliver and remembers how good his hands are at chasing worry out and making her feel safe and loved. “A back rub, maybe?” she says.

“Sure,” he says. “Lay down.”

She goes back to the bed, careful to avoid banging her shins on its wooden ledge. She crawls to the middle and lays down on her stomach. She’s not wearing any clothes, and Oliver’s hands are in the hollow of her back. He digs his thumbs in there and presses at the knots. “Brace yourself,” he says, and she does. She closes her eyes.

Right away the flashing lights are back, and she tenses.

“Did I hurt you?” Oliver asks, pulling his hands away.

She shakes her head. “No.” The numbers on the screen are counting down for time and up for death, and she can’t make them stop. She bites down hard on her lip so she won’t cry, but the tears begin to leak out of the corners of her eyes anyway.

“What’s wrong, Felicity?” Oliver asks, his voice low, gentle. He lays down beside her and lets his fingers trail up and down her spine. “What is it?”

She curls up into herself and hugs her knees. They’re damp now, and she realizes she sobbing. She sucks in her breath in an attempt to calm herself, but the salt from her tears hits the raw back of her throat and she swallows in pain. Her body is mutinying; it won’t obey her orders. The hurt and angry parts of it will not be corralled or convinced that things are the way they’re supposed to be.

Obviously this is not how things are supposed to be.

“It’s me,” she says, biting into her knee. A small punishment - for the knee or herself? “I killed them.”

She hears Oliver’s intake of breath. “You didn’t kill anyone,” he says carefully. “You didn’t.”

“Havenrock,” she says. “The people there are dead because of me, because I rerouted that missile.” That’s the message of the numbers behind her eyes. She doesn’t have to be a coder to read it.

He makes a shushing sound. “No, no,” he says. “It was H.I.V.E.’s fault. _Darhk’s_. Not yours. We’re only alive now - here and everywhere else - because you managed to stop the missiles.”

“The Havenrock people aren’t. They’re ashes now. Ashes and smoke.” That strikes her as funny somehow, and she laughs. “Smoak. Smoke. My fault.” She curls more tightly into herself, twisting her hands together over her heart. “My fault.”

Oliver pries her body apart gradually, carefully. He straightens her arms and pulls her hands over her head. He straddles her, keeping most of his weight on his knees. “Look at me,” he says, but she doesn’t. She turns her head to the side and lets her tears soak the sheets.

“Look at me,” he says again. She shakes her head.

“ _Look at me_.” This time it’s an order, and, surprised, she does. His eyes are no longer sad. He’s focused. He has that Oliver-in-charge look about him. She hasn’t seen that in awhile, outside of the televised press conferences and in those he’s still jovial, reassuring somehow. He’s not jovial now.

“You did _not_ kill those people,” he says. “I can’t stop those dreams from coming - I know what that’s like - but I’m not going to let you drown in this, accusing yourself of mass murder. I’ve lived that. _You’re_ not going to. You’re the best person I know. The strongest.”

She grits her teeth because she can’t curl up again with his weight on her legs. “I’m not strong,” she says.

“You are.”

She laughs again bitterly. “ _Oliver_ , I’m not. Look at my life. I’m lowballing the whole goddamn thing. I haven’t decided anything! I don’t know what to do about Palmer Tech, I’m bunking at Lyla’s on a fold-up cot. I haven’t done any work! The highlight of my day is taking Sara down to pet Oreo and sneak him treats! And look at how I’ve treated you. You’re the only one who’s put me first in any of this. Maybe not all of the time, but…”

She feels the pressure on her hands lessen. “I didn’t put you first when it really mattered,” Oliver says.

“But all the other times during this horrible fucking year,” she says. “I couldn’t go to the bathroom without you. You had to wipe me every…” She’s disgusted at herself all over again. “Like a babysitter. Like--”

“Like someone who loves you,” he said. He looks up and away from her. “Darhk came for me, not you. And you were the one who was shot and left to die.”

“He came for both of us,” she says. “I chose you. I told you we had to come back to Star City and help. I wanted to stay. You didn’t. I said we could have it all - be married, save the city. It’s my fault, what happened in the limo. I never blamed you. You were right that. On the stuff that matters - the spooky prescient stuff, you always are.”

“It was _Darhk’s_ fault!” Oliver says. He lifts his hands off of hers and sits back on his haunches. “There’s no reason we should have not had a life together! He wanted to kill everyone! That was his endgame. Don’t you blame yourself - he gave the orders! He tried to kill you!” The veins are outlined on his reddened face, and his hands are in fists.

“Oliver?” she says.

It’s his turn to close his eyes and bow his head. She sees him breathe in and she can almost hear his mental counting. After a minute, he says, “He’s dead, Felicity, but he’s still making people I care about feel helpless and guilty - Dig and you. He took away your confidence and made you feel ugly - the best people I know.” His shoulders slump. “I killed him.”

Is he feeling bad about killing Darhk? She can’t imagine it. If anyone deserved to die, it was Damian Darhk, but Oliver is an expert at hard feelings.

She lifts a hand and puts it on his muscled arm. “I’m sorry _you_ had to kill him,” she says.

He raises his head, and she sees the rage appear in his eyes. “I’m not,” he says. “I’m glad I killed him. He tried to murder you how many times? He took my sister. He took my son! He made Diggle doubt himself. When I saw you in the hospital, I wanted to rip him apart piece by piece. Do you think I haven’t imagined it? I have.”

“Well, of course you wanted to kill him,” she says, backtracking. “I did too. He killed Laurel. It’s only natural.”

“No, I mean, take him apart, make him _feel_ it.” Oliver runs his hands through his short hair and makes a rough motion with his hands. “Slice him up the middle and gut him like a fish. I wanted to scoop out his bulging trout eyes with arrow points and twist them into his hand. I thought about how exactly I would kill him at night when you cried in your sleep because the pain meds didn’t dull everything.” He palms her cheek and strokes it softly with his thumb.

“If you think that when I pulled your body from that limo…” He clenches his jaw. “Th-the look on your face when I put the baby monitor in our bedroom.” His body is a long line of tense muscle, she feels the angry strength radiating from him, but the brush of his thumb on her face is feather light.

“Y-you never said,” Felicity says.

“I’m good at that,” Oliver says and then jerks his head. “You had enough on your plate.”

“December and January are a blur,” she says, “I can barely remember them. What did you do instead of killing him?”

“I beat the streets for ghosts. I worked out. I cooked a lot,” he says.

“The full freezer,” she says, realizing.

He nods. “There’s still food in there. I can’t eat it all by myself.”

She thinks for a minute. “Why didn’t you kill him?”

“We had a little trouble getting around his magic,” he says.

“But after Mari destroyed the idol? You could have killed him then.”

He lays down beside her on the bed. “I’m not that person anymore,” he says. “I don’t hurt people because I can. What you want to do doesn’t make you who you are. It’s what you _do_ do.”

“I told you to kill him.” She knows how much weight her opinion carries with him. He’d kill for her. He’d die for her. She feels a twinge at how carelessly she threw that demand at him.

“I didn’t kill him because you told me to,” he says. “Or even because he deserved it. He deserved a lot worse. I did it because it was the only way to stop him. The police couldn’t. The justice system couldn’t. We put him in jail and he got out. He was a danger to everyone. That’s why I killed him. It wasn’t personal, it wasn’t satisfying, but it was right.”

It’s very dark, but she can see him, the parts of him that matter, and feel him taking over her heart. He’s such a good man. He doesn’t even know. He strokes her hair with his hand, and she feels the rough skin of his palm tug on the strands.

“Havenrock isn’t your fault,” he says. “Tell me.”

She thinks of the cratered land, the ruins of the town, and the black shadows of the people who’d lived there. All of those people.

“Not your fault,” he says. “You had a split second to decide whether more people would die or less. You chose less. You didn’t build the missile, you didn’t launch the missile. You tried to stop it.”

“I couldn’t stop it,” she says. She couldn’t. She tried. She’d tried and tried.

“I know,” he says. “Sometimes we can’t. All we can do is try. Tell me.”

She swallows deeply, and her throat hurts. Oh, it hurts. It hurts so much. The tears are flowing again, this time down her face and dripping off her neck. He catches one with his finger. “Tell me, Felicity.”

“It’s not my fault,” she says, leaning back against him. “Havenrock is not my fault.”  

**Author's Note:**

> I thought I'd add a note to this to explain my headcanon of Felicity's injuries. She was shot multiple times during the ambush of the limo, and one of those bullets resulted in the spinal cord injury that left her paralyzed. On the show in 4x10 they mention she's had a number of surgeries to correct the damage, and then in 4x11 she's seen recovering at home, moving about in a wheelchair, and taking pain meds that may or may not have contributed to her hallucinations of her former self. After that episode, she returns to work and the only other medical mention of her injuries is when the bio-stimulant is proposed as a solution and then, after it's inserted, when she has physical therapy to learn how to walk again.
> 
> I've always found the writers' treatment and timetable wildly unbelievable. First of all, the recovery time from multiple gunshot wounds would be months, and abdominal injuries that resulted in paralysis would likely involve damage to other visceral organs. She would have been taking pain meds for a long, long time, and she would have needed help to move about the loft when she left the hospital, not just because she was paralyzed and having to learn how to maneuver her body without the use of her legs, but because her injuries would have left her severely weakened and in pain. Chances are they would have had to hire a full-time nurse for at least the initial period to make certain that her medication schedule was being followed, that her body was healing normally, and to assist her with eating, bathing, and using the bathroom. During and after that, Oliver would surely have been involved with her care.
> 
> On the show, of course, we saw him carry her down the stairs, ask about her meds, and tell her how to reheat a meal he made for her. *side eyes the writers hard* 
> 
> Because of the layout of the loft, she would have had to either sleep on a rented hospital bed on the first floor, where Oliver could watch over her, or upstairs in their bedroom. If she chose the latter, I can't see him being there all of the time. He had a mayoral campaign to run and also his duties as the Green Arrow. I'm positive he would have put a video monitor in the room as well as an intercom and a way for Felicity to signal for distress besides her cellphone or computer. That kind of physical trauma leaves you pretty helpless. He wouldn't have taken the chance that she could fall or suffer some kind of post-surgery complication alone. 
> 
> I suppose including these details in this vignette is my way of trying to acknowledge the suffering the writers actually inflicted on Felicity instead of the fantasy depicted on the show.


End file.
